Translational Politics in Southeast Asian Literatures

Contesting Race, Gender, and Sexuality

Grace V. S. Chin, Grace V. S. Chin

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000363326
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Lingue e linguistica
• Categoria: Linguistica

Highlighting the interconnections between Southeast Asia and the world through literature, this book calls for a different reading approach to the literatures of Southeast Asia by using translation as the main conceptual framework in the analyses and interpretation of the texts, languages, and cultures of the following countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, and the Philippines.

Through the theme of "translational politics, " the contributors critically examine not only the linguistic properties but also the metaphoric, symbolic, and semiotic meanings, images, and representations that have been translated across societies and cultures through local and global consumption and circulation of literature, (new) media, and other cultural forms. Using translation to unlock and decode multiple, different languages, narratives, histories, and worldviews emerging from Southeast Asian geo-literary contexts, this book builds on current scholarship and offers new approaches to the contestations of race, gender, and sexuality in literature, which often involve the politically charged discourses of identity, language, and representation.

At the same time, this book provides new perspectives and future directions in the study of Southeast Asian literatures. Exploring a range of literary and cultural products, including written texts, performance, and cinema, this volume will be a key resource for students and researchers interested in translation and cultural studies, comparative and world literature, and Southeast Asian studies.

1 Introduction

Grace V.S. Chin

The identity politics of race, gender, and sexuality in the study of Southeast Asian literatures is by no means a new subject in the field. In the past few decades, there has been a steady stream of scholarship on this subject, with the majority dominated by concerns about race, ethnicity, and language, followed by gender and sexuality as subjects of inquiry.¹ Influenced by the postcolonial turn in the 1980s (Bachmann-Medick 2016), these studies have contributed much to our understanding and exploration of the literatures of Southeast Asia as a fertile field of inquiry and theorising, especially in terms of the representational politics of identity and their relation to power, hegemony, resistance, diaspora, transnationalism, cross-culturalism, the nation-state, hybridity, and globalisation, among others.

Despite the inroads made, there are, nonetheless, limits to these studies as many tend to revolve around the literary productions of individual countries.² When a comparative lens is employed, the analysis is often motivated by language, which can be coupled with race and ethnicity; examples include the Malay-language and Chinese-language (sinophone) literary and cultural productions in the region.³ Another area of comparison is the literary form and canon.⁴ The drawing of ideological lines based on country/nation and language in fact highlights the “bounded” nature of literary activity and production in the postcolonial contexts of Southeast Asia, where much of the creative output takes place in the native/mother tongue or national language—a phenomenon that has largely been shaped by the decolonising ideologies and strategies of the region’s post-independent nation-states, and also by the nationalising (and often homogenising) prerogatives and impetuses of the ruling governments in the developmental nation-building years.⁵

While the resulting language barrier is an obstacle for international researchers who have to learn the language or else rely on works produced in English (or other global languages) and/or translations for their material, it is also worthwhile noting that national policies on language and culture—instrumental to the construction and regulation of “national literature,” “national writer,” and, ultimately, “national identity” as demarcating categories of independence, sovereignty, and difference—have also resulted in the segregated manner with which the literatures of Southeast Asia have traditionally been constructed and perpetuated as a field of research and knowledge production. Consequently, much of the current scholarship is based on country-specific and, more often than not, language-specific canons and productions.⁶ Another complication is the divided scholarly attention between the “mainland” states (Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) and the “island” states (Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, and the Philippines) in the region, with the international scholarship on literary studies centred mostly on the anglophone productions emerging from ex-British and ex-American colonies among the “island” states: Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines (Chin and Rajandran 2020). These developments have disadvantaged the research on Southeast Asia, affecting those of us working in our respective locations and language-bound fields as we find ourselves mostly ignorant of the works produced in other languages, whether in our own or neighbouring countries.

According to Chua Beng Huat, the production of Southeast Asian texts in non-European languages may be one of the central reasons why the region “does not figure significantly, if at all” (2008, 231) in the field of postcolonial studies, adding that the exclusion indicates “a very colonial practice at work in the production of knowledge of postcoloniality” (2008, 232).⁷ The same exclusionary practice can be seen in the study of Southeast Asian literatures, which have still not been given the kind of attention that has been showered on the literatures of their bigger, and more popular, Asian neighbours, notably India, a veritable “giant” in the construction and production of postcolonial studies, not to mention China and Japan, both of which are favourite locations for the study of world literature. As for comparative literature programmes, the majority are found in the US, where much of the focus is on European texts, or Asian texts from South Asia and East Asia. Sandwiched between East Asia and South Asia, Southeast Asia—being neither one nor the other but a liminal space in-between—has remained relatively obscure (despite its wealth of literary offerings) as an area of study in the fields of postcolonial literature, comparative literature, and world literature. As an academic subject, “Southeast Asian Literature” is offered mainly by Southeast Asian/Asian studies programmes and institutes or is found in local academic programmes, albeit in association with the country; for instance, the subject of “Malaysian Literature in English” is offered by a few university-affiliated English language and literature programmes in Malaysia.

Eurocentric practices and biases are also reflected in the epistemological hierarchies derived from the unequal positioning of literatures on a global scale, which are mirrored to an extent within the region itself. As noted earlier, anglophone productions from former British and American colonies—in particular Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines—have traditionally received higher recognition compared to other regional productions by virtue of the language medium used: English (see also Chin and Rajandran 2020). In recent years, the visibility of these places as favoured reading destinations has been heightened by the emergence of international award-winning authors such as Malaysia’s Tan Twan Eng and Tash Aw, or bestselling authors turned Hollywood darlings like Singapore’s Kevin Kwan, all of whom are now feted as global or postcolonial anglophone luminaries. This development has been reinforced by literary market trends, seen in the growing corpus and increased visibility of diasporic and transnational literatures produced by Southeast Asian writers who have made their homes in Australia, the UK, and the US. As a result, “transnationalism,” “diaspora,” “hybridity,” and hyphenated identity categories have emerged as key terms and domains of research in the study of Southeast Asian literatures, with scores of studies and research publications attesting to the popularity of these subjects. However, the downside to this development is that literary works written in national or native languages have continued to be excluded from the global limelight, until and unless they are translated into English or other global languages.

Language lies at the very heart of the investigations found in this volume. An ideological minefield in the geopolitics of the postcolonial and modern Southeast Asian nation-state, language is inextricable from the politics of identity and representation. Historically linked to the movements of anti-colonialism, decolonisation, independence, and nation-building, language has—especially for the bilingual or multilingual Southeast Asian writer—emerged as a negotiated ideological choice, whereby the decision to write in one’s national language/mother tongue, or not, invariably taps into the discourse of nationalism and its attendant articulations of loyalty, homeland, and belonging.⁸ Although this situation has been mitigated by the region’s increasingly internationalised outlook—with English acknowledged as the premier language of global trade, commerce, technology, diplomacy, and travel, the multiple challenges arising from language and literary barriers and hierarchies as well as the prevailing Eurocentric views and practices in the region and the world have, as noted earlier, remained; they include the lack of trans-Southeast Asian connections, the relative obscurity of Southeast Asian literatures, and the imbalances in regional and global literary productions and readership. These challenges not only influence literary and academic trends, readership, and the publishing market, but also directly impact the way we “read” and perceive Southeast Asia as a geo-literary phenomenon.

Tackling these key concerns and challenges, this volume calls for a different approach to the reading of Southeast Asian literatures through the theme of “translational politics,” with translation deployed as the main conceptual framework in the analyses and interpretation of texts, languages, and cultures of the following countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, and the Philippines. Derived from the Latin translatio, which means to “carry across” or “bring across,” translation has been inextricably linked to literary research in the fields of postcolonial literature, comparative literature, world literature, and cultural studies—a development also known as “literary translation” in translation studies, which involves the study of translated literature and texts within social, cultural, and political contexts and systems, and approaches to the text as process and product, among others (Albaladejo and Chico-Rico 2018; Jones 2009; Wright 2016). In Southeast Asia, the scholarship on translated literature is fairly substantial, based on either country-specific or regional and cross-country comparative research.⁹ However, the approaches used are still quite conventional as they typically focus on the literary or linguistic analysis of local texts translated into English (or other global languages) by the researcher, who may also undertake the task of translating the materials or texts. While this volume continues to work within this tradition, the contributors and I nonetheless hope to expand the boundaries of literary scholarship and conventions by using translation concepts, theories, and approaches to inform our research. Specifically, we aim to fill a significant gap in the field by examining the politics of translation in relation to race, gender, and sexuality in Southeast Asian texts and contexts, with emphasis on local perspectives and practices.

Since the 1990s, scholars working in translation studies have emerged with bold and exciting theories, paradigms, perspectives, and approaches that challenge the limi...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Self-conscious and queer: translating the pasts of Singapore and Malaysia in Lydia Kwa’s This Place Called Absence and Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain
• 3 Performance and translation: Hang Li Po and the politics of history
• 4 Were-tigers in were-texts: cultural translation and indigeneity in the Malay Archipelago
• 5 Translating the ideal girl: female images in Khmer literature and cinema
• 6 Gained in translation: the politics of localising Western stories in late-colonial Indonesia
• 7 Translating Islam: conversion and love in Bruneian fiction
• 8 Cinematic erasure: translating Southeast/Asia in Crazy Rich Asians
• 9 Translation and LGBT Studies in the Philippines
• Index